Domestic Terrorism: The News as an Incomplete Record of Violence Against Women (From Constructing Danger: The Mis/Representation of Crime in the News, P 56-73, 1995, Douglas Beall, ed. - See NCJ-162999)

• NCJ Number: 163002
• Author(s): D Forsyth-Smith
• Date Published: 1995
• Length: 18 pages
• Sale Source: Fernwood Publishing
• Publication Type: Issue Overview
• Language: English
• Country: Canada
• Note: *This document is currently unavailable from NCJRS.

Annotation

This chapter analyzes a select sample of articles dealing with violence against women in relationships to determine how well newspapers deal with the issue.

Abstract

The media have only recently taken up the issue of violence against women and coverage tends to be isolated and sensationalist. In analyzing various articles on violence against women in relationships, several measures are used to evaluate how an article covers the topic, including the size of the article, whether it portrays the violence as unusual, and whether it locates a specific crime in the context of violence against women in general. The chapter also considers other sources of information on the subject and examines statistics on femicide and wife battery in Canada. The author concludes that the news imperfectly records the extent and character of violence against women. Violence against women in relationships is presented in a way that removes it from the context of the very structure of male power and violence that allows it to happen in the first place. Figures, notes